Good morning,

This week marks my 42nd wedding anniversary. On paper, it looks like a fairytale. But the truth is, love at any stage—whether you’re single, married, divorced, widowed, or living happily down the street from your partner—is a constant act of editing. It’s work, humor, and compromise in continuous rotation.

Maybe that’s why Nicole Kidman’s split hit a nerve, and our writer's story about finding love again on her own terms resonates. Because the fantasy version is never tidy; the IRL one requires maintenance, reinvention, and maybe a mailbox of your own.

Forty-two years later, I still believe in the fairytale. But the best ones are rewritten over time—sometimes together, sometimes apart, but always by choice.

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CULTURE

Sharp commentary on the world around us.

Nicole and Keith Split and We’re Bummed

BY VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL

When a long marriage like Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s unravels, it stirs something deeper than curiosity. Maybe because women our age know what it costs to build a life—and how fast it can be undone. This isn’t about celebrity heartbreak; it’s about the illusion of having it “all” and the parasocial stories we tell ourselves about women who do. What happens when the fantasy falters—but the woman doesn’t?

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BRAIN AND BODY

Wellness, emotional fitness, and what nourishes us now.

Profits Over Patients?

BY WENDEE NICOLE

What if one of the most promising clues in Alzheimer’s research has been hiding in plain sight? A new Harvard study explores how low-dose lithium—yes, that lithium—might influence brain health and memory in early testing. For a disease that affects women twice as often as men, it’s a lead worth watching. But why isn’t anyone talking about it? Follow the money, and the silence starts to make sense.

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LIVING OUT LOUD

Real stories of rewiring, relationships, and this messy, beautiful life.

Why So Many Women Over 50 Are Skipping the Ring—and Thriving

BY MELISSA GOULD

He lives down the street, she keeps her own house. For women in midlife, love doesn’t have to come with a ring, a mortgage, or monogrammed towels. It can mean separate homes and accounts, and a shared sense of peace. Women are rewriting the rules of partnership. At this stage, love isn’t about being chosen. It’s about choosing yourself and still leaving room for someone else.

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YOUR WALLET

Money, power, and getting what you're worth.

'Overqualified' Is Just Polite Code for 'Too Damn Old'

BY JOANNE HELPERIN

We’ve all heard it: “You’re overqualified.” It’s the corporate euphemism that sounds flattering but really means you’re too damn old for us. For women 50+, it’s not just insulting—it’s economically devastating. We're calling out the polite sexism of the workplace and the courage it takes to start again when the system writes you off. If you’ve ever been dismissed for being “too much” of anything, this one’s for you.

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TAKE NOTE

Timely and worth your attention.

🎩 We say goodbye to Diane Keaton. Gone too soon at 79. There are icons—and then there was Keaton. Nothing about her was performative. Smart and funny as hell, she made intellect sexy and awkwardness power. She turned androgyny into art, eccentricity into elegance, and redefined what having agency means. In a word: undeniable. She showed our generation what it means to be different in a world where everyone’s trying to look the same. Read what her fellow stars had to say of her passing.

🏆 The Nobel: At 58, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has joined the elite ranks of Nobel Peace Prize winners for her fight to restore democracy in Venezuela. Educated in engineering and finance at Wellesley College, she blends intellect with defiance. The Nobel Committee praised her “civilian courage” in the face of brutal repression. Only eight women have won the Peace Prize in the past 20 years. Imagine a world where women actually had a seat at the big-boy peace table—how different world peace might look?

🎀 Breast Cancer Awareness Month isn’t just about pink. A new Cancer journal study has sounded the alarm: Cases of lobular breast cancer—a rare but particularly dangerous form—is rising three times faster than all other breast cancers combined. So this October, don’t just “think pink.” Mammogram guidelines have changed. Book the mammogram, learn the signs, ask questions, and push for better research.

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💬 Help shape PROVOKED.​
We’re always tweaking the newsletter, and your opinion actually decides what stays and what goes.

It’s eight questions. Forty seconds. Talk to us here.

LAUGH LINES

Humor with bite—because if we're not laughing, what are we even doing?

My Body, My Temple, My $2,000 Copay

BY ABBY HEUGEL

Ever felt like your “wellness journey” is just a scavenger hunt through billing codes, vague diagnoses, and suggestions to try goat yoga? This week’s takedown turns middle-aged medicine into comedy gold and raging fury. From pantless exams to “pre-existing condition: being a woman,” it exposes how the health care system gaslights, overcharges, and underdelivers. Health care may be broken, but our sense of humor isn’t.

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READER SPOTLIGHT

Results are in from the Taylor Swift Survey last week...

🎵Favorite Song: First Place—Opalite, Second Place—Wood

✨Vibes: Masterpiece Art-History Flex

✒️ Best Lyric: "His love was the key that opened my thighs"

💃🏼 Listening Mood: Dancing in the Kitchen

🌶️ Spicy Comments:

"We love a girl in her hot sex era! Travis clearly know his way around the bedroom like he does a football field."—Skylar

"OMG, it’s giving grown woman energy: love without losing yourself, boundaries like Fort Knox, and friendship bracelets for the girls who survived the chaos and came out shining!"—Tena

"She's super intelligent, hyper-aware, and gorgeous—what's not to love?!"—Debbie

"She's come out of the shell that the industry built around her."—Kay

"Taylor has broken all types of records with this release. It doesn't matter what the critics say, the ultimate critic is those that buy the music, the release party tickets, and love to learn the dance moves. I'm A BIG FAN. Unapologetic!"—Mary

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OUR SHORT LIST

Informative, quirky, and fun.

🐦 Calling all birders and bird-curious alike. Two brothers, one absurd birdwatching mission—1.5 million views and counting. Free, hilarious, and proof that birding just went viral.

📺 Midlife crisis? But funny. Amy Poehler nails every cliché—pickleball, menopause, piercings, and existential dread—turning the midlife rebellion into comedy gold.

🕵️‍♀️ Lost your keys or glasses again? Science (and maybe a little magic) says there’s a smarter way to find what’s missing. Six tricks that actually work.

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